Following the tradition of “playing nice with other libraries”, jQuery v1.2 now provides the ability to define a custom namespace for the events expando, thus adding one more method of ensuring that jQuery developers can successfully work in a multi-library environment. John Resig had this to say:

It’s incredibly important for us, and our users, that the jQuery library work in any JavaScript environment. In jQuery 1.2 you can now depend on the fact that jQuery will protect itself from outside code influences, and libraries, even going so far as to protect itself from other versions of jQuery that might be running on the same page. Knowing that your copy of jQuery will always behave the way you expect it, no matter what the platform, is the cornerstone of the project.

Along those same lines of working for the community, the team has provided jQuery developers with an easy way to migrate into jQuery v1.2 by providing a compatibility plugin. With some functionality being removed in jQuery v1.2 release, including this plugin allows developers to have all of the features that were removed in the newest release.

We worked hard over the last three months to make UI a seamless, rock-solid solution for many interface situations. It’s nearly there – featuring many core level modules, ready-to-go widgets and custom, unique themes. To make the experience even nicer, the team created a smart downloader, a playground with demo apps and tests and of course documentation. We are pretty excited about our release on Sunday – be sure not to miss it!

jquery is like a very strong drug, except taht it actually does your body and mind a lot of good. Anyone who hasnâ€™t tried it yet should give it 15 minutes, thatâ€™s all it takes to get converted.

As a person who develops with prototype, it took me about 45 minutes to realize I have no need nor interest in jQuery, and about another hour convincing my employer (for whom I’m the only existing Javascript coder anyway) that we’ll be better off switching to prototype/scriptaculous.

I think jQuery is probably great, but it’s not for everyone nor for every project.

Comment by Trevor — September 11, 2007

wow, looks awesome… this library just keeps getting better. I love how they honor the ‘playing nice’ aspect. Huge. Many thanks to John Resig and the jQuery crew

Does jQuery provide support for inheritance and superclass methods as in Prototype 1.6?

Comment by Les — September 11, 2007

As a person who used to develop with Prototype, it took me about 45 minutes to realize I had wasted months learning Prototype and implementing a proper OO solution on the client. Keep the OO in the backend and introduce some unobtrusive (but beautiful!) JavaScript with jQuery. Nice job John!

As a person who develops with jQuery, it took me about 45 minutes to realize I have no need nor interest in Trevor, and about another hour convincing my employer (for whom I have a huge crush on) that we’ll be better off switching to jQuery/UI. I think Trevor is probably great, but he’s not for everyone nor every project.

Comment by Michael — September 11, 2007

Does jQuery provide support for custom events and templates as in Prototype 1.6?

The UI looks interesting. I’m not a big fan of the design polution that comes with it as the preview suggests though, hopefully jquery will stick with coding mostly. Having UI with more solid code out there is a great thing, it feels a lot more dependable then having all the user contributed plugins. I know those won’t disappear anytime soon but at least it’s not all about the plugins anymore. Nice job.

Comment by Nick — September 11, 2007

I make heavy use of Protaculous and don’t usually use jQuery. On the other hand, Protaculous can be like eating soup with a serving ladle – a bit much for the task. In cases where I need some visual goodness, jQuery is much quicker/easier. If I need some JavaScript heavy lifting, I stick to Prototype.

So while Trevor is good for most projects, I’ll still need Michael for others.

:)

Great job, jQuery team!

Comment by Jon — September 11, 2007

@Jon: Your statement, “If I need some JavaScript heavy lifting, I stick to Prototype.”, really caught my attention. Can you elaborate on this a bit?

Comment by Rey Bango — September 11, 2007

As one of the UI developers, i can say that an upload widget is also ready, but it lacks docs.. :) It features stuff the other upload widgets don’t have..

Lets not make another appinion war about whats best or not like ms/mac ect. We got alot of great people out there making our life easier in many ways with there frameworks. And i dont think any of them is interrested in lame comments there offend users of other frameworks. As i see it prototype and jQuery got there own forces and weakness. I used to use prototype and its deffently great but today i stick with jQuery. But we should be happy that we got the choice to use any of these and praise there hard work.

Comment by Ronni Rasmussen — September 12, 2007

@Jon, Rey:
IÂ´d like to know more about it also – so far I have never come into a programming situation I felt tempted to switch from jQ to prototype… right now every day I feel more assured in my decision for jQ.
Grats!

I see a contant drop in ratings, yesterday it was 1.48E+138 out of 5 now it is 1.19E+138 out of five… does that mean somebody has voted “4”?
:-)
I know you are busy, please send me the code so I can correct that.mailto://frank.thuerigen@phpbuero,de

I see Prototype as used for heavy lifting and jQuery for a little splash of something pretty on a blog or something trivial like that. I havenâ€™t considered it for application structure because I havenâ€™t seen any reason to switch. I love the built in helpers and easily read source of Prototype. The uncompressed code of jQuery looks as if it is already obsfucated. With Prototype 1.6 RC0 (and Scripty in hot pursuit) having new event and class abilities I feel that jQuery may be playing a bit of catch up. I know have strong opinions on both frameworks and I have always read that you canâ€™t compare the frameworks because they are meant for two different things. If Prototype is used for application development then what is jQuery used for?

Oh, and guys, give Trevor a break. :P

Comment by jdalton — September 12, 2007

@jdalton: jQuery has always been able to do custom events. I helped give some advice to the Prototype team on how to do it, when they were looking at integrating it into their code base.

I’d have to agree with jdalton – no reason to switch from Prototype. jQuery will be (in my mind) considered a mini-library until it provides true support for inheritance and superclass methods, which is now in part available in Prototype 1.6 RC0.

Comment by Les — September 12, 2007

Hi John, I think its cool jQuery has custom events too (do they bubble up and work like real events like Prototypes?).
Also, my comment about class abilities was concerning Prototype (I know jQuery has none, and thats my point).

By the way don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of jQuery but that doesn’t mean I don’t digg its progress. I am glad we have choices and things are much better than a few years ago.

Comment by jdalton — September 12, 2007

I don’t know which best way to comment, without being ragged. But with all the rave comments here, I wonder if any of you have tried MooTools yet. I am not saying JQuery is worse, I am just saying give MooTools a shot and you will be surprised at what you see. And I am not one of the developers or an evangelist but feel that anyone who is seriously considering using JQuery on any large projects, should have a look at many frameworks, especially MooTools

Comment by nfq — September 12, 2007

i’ll be really interested to see how UI turn out. jquery is the only javascript helper i use, and UI is a very ambitious new direction for the project to pursue. i have the utmost confidence that we’re going to get a very clean very minimal solution for doing a lot of ui elements.

I am not a JS guy – in fact, for the longest time, javascript scared the hell out of me! When i came to the realization that I NEEDED to learn to use JavaScript if i wanted to continue developing for the ‘new’ Web 2.0, I tried a few solutions.

I started with Prototype\Scriptaculous and I had such a hard time understanding it and its structure. Coding it was a nightmare and I could not for the life of me get things to work. I ended up just copying code from other sites and using it as my own. While this worked, it didnt allow me flexibility because i couldn’t code my own effects and such.

I tried Mootools which I liked but again as a beginner, its structure confused me too much to really understand what i was doing or trying to do.

All along I had heard all this hype about jQuery which I never tried because its name alone sounds more cryptic that the alternatives. Boy was I wrong. Within 15 minutes, I knew what I was doing. The structure makes sense. The code is easily readable. The selectors it allows are incredible. I know CSS fairly well so selecting the right elements was simple!

For me, jQuery has saved me and brought new life to all of my projects and sites and I wouldnt have been able to be where I am now without jQuery.